Overview

As felons, perjurers and whores rehearse, their playmaker becomes strangely seduced. For the play's power is mirrored in the rich, varied life of this primitive land, and, not least, in the convict and actress, Mary Brenham.

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The best Australian writer alive * Auberon Waugh * Mingles meticulous research with lucid characterisation * Daily Mail * Punchy, highly intelligent * Financial Times * This is Mr Keneally at his best * Daily Telegraph * The literary joy here has more to do with how individual each characterisation is, each one tuned to another note of Keneally's rich, strong prose * Kirkus Reviews * An excellent novel * Independent * He seizes with stunning effect on an event far more bizarre than any fiction * New Statesman * A magnificent and moving documentary, a tribute to his roots * Mail on Sunday * Formidably good . . . strong, subtle, echoing and profound * The Sunday Times *

Formidably good ... strong, subtle, echoing and profound The Sunday Times A magnificent and moving documentary, a tribute to his roots Mail on Sunday He seizes with stunning effect on an event far more bizarre than any fiction New Statesman An excellent novel Independent The literary joy here has more to do with how individual each characterisation is, each one tuned to another note of Keneally's rich, strong prose Kirkus Reviews This is Mr Keneally at his best Daily Telegraph Punchy, highly intelligent Financial Times Mingles meticulous research with lucid characterisation Daily Mail The best Australian writer alive Auberon Waugh

Formidably good . . . strong, subtle, echoing and profound - The Sunday Times A magnificent and moving documentary, a tribute to his roots - Mail on Sunday He seizes with stunning effect on an event far more bizarre than any fiction - New Statesman An excellent novel - Independent The literary joy here has more to do with how individual each characterisation is, each one tuned to another note of Keneally's rich, strong prose - Kirkus Reviews This is Mr Keneally at his best - Daily Telegraph Punchy, highly intelligent - Financial Times Mingles meticulous research with lucid characterisation - Daily Mail

Keneally's mature fiction goes from strength to strength, finding ever new subjects to press within the vise of its historical imagination. He's now provided a brilliant fictional corollary to Robert Hughes' impressive The Fatal Shore in this portrait of convict-settled Sydney, Australia, in the late 1700's (contemporaneous with the new United States of America). An English officer in Sydney, a Lieutenant Clark, receives permission to stage a play - Farquhar's bawdy comedy, The Recruiting Officer - and to cast it out of the convict population, the wretches who, spared the gallows in London, were transported to nowhere to do what no one is quite yet sure. But only to juxtapose the dispossessed and disadvantaged playing roles of freedom doesn't satisfy subtle Keneally: the novel is as well a chock-full panorama of English criminal life and disproportionate punishment, searching through its men and women ( she-lags ) and their codes of honor that give them an odd advantage over the English officers and clergy in the desolate land. The jailors, we're always aware, live in this jail too - ab origines in their own right, prey to all sorts of supra-rational occurrences (spells and visions) that nothing in England could have prepared them for. But the literary joy here has more to do with how individual each characterization is, each one tuned to another note of Keneally's fastidious yet rich, strong prose. The Nobel committee, given its laggardness, ought to start looking at Keneally now, though he's relatively young. At this rate, he'll be edging toward the top of the list soon enough. (Kirkus Reviews)

The author of Schindler's Ark once again draws on people and events recorded in history to transport us to the earliest days of a remote penal station in Australia's New South Wales. There Lieutenant Ralph Clark is pulling together a performance of 'The Recruiting Officer', the first play the penal colony has witnessed, and Clark suspects the first ever theatre to be performed so far south. Keneally brings this unusual community to life, depicting the brutality of life for the newly-arrived convicts, and Clark's dark wrestles with his own conscience. A gripping read, with as many twists as the play the convicts perform. (Kirkus UK)

Formidably good . . . strong, subtle, echoing and profound - The Sunday Times A magnificent and moving documentary, a tribute to his roots - Mail on Sunday He seizes with stunning effect on an event far more bizarre than any fiction - New Statesman An excellent novel - Independent The literary joy here has more to do with how individual each characterisation is, each one tuned to another note of Keneally's rich, strong prose - Kirkus Reviews This is Mr Keneally at his best - Daily Telegraph Punchy, highly intelligent - Financial Times Mingles meticulous research with lucid characterisation - Daily Mail

Author Information

Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published more than thirty novels since. They include Schindler's Ark, which won the Booker Prize in 1982 and was subsequently made into the film Schindler's List, and The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith, Confederates and Gossip From The Forest, each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of non-fiction, including his memoir Homebush Boy, Searching for Schindler and Australians. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney.

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